Latest News Clips 2017.11.13

1.      Trump praises China and blames US for trade deficit

President says he does not blame Beijing ‘for taking advantage’ of US, and is confident it will defuse North Korea threat

The Guardian   9 November 2017 

 

Donald Trump has lavished praise on the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, and blamed his own predecessors for the “huge” trade deficit between the world’s two largest economies, during his official welcome to Beijing amid an explosion of military splendour and staged adulation.

Speaking on Thursday at the the Great Hall of the People, the ceremonial heart of Communist party rule, Trump paid tribute to his “warm and gracious” host, and said he appreciated Xi’s support for recent efforts to rein in North Korea’s weapons programmes.

During his presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly criticised China, accusing it of “raping” the US economy and being the country’s “enemy”. But on the second day of his visit to Beijing as part of his 12-day tour of East Asia, the president struck a far softer tone.

 “Trade between China and the United States has not been, over the last many, many years, a very fair one for us,” Trump told an audience of business leaders and journalists, describing the relationship as “shockingly” unbalanced and costing the US $300bn (£229bn) a year.

However, to an audible gasp from the audience, the US president went on to suggest that it was not China to blame, but the US itself.

“Right now, unfortunately, it is a very one-sided and unfair [relationship]. But – but – I don’t blame China. After all, who can blame a country for taking advantage of another country for the benefit of its own citizens? I give China great credit.

“But in actuality I do blame past [US] administrations for allowing this out of control trade deficit to take place and to grow. We have to fix this because it just doesn’t work … it is just not sustainable.”

The US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, later tried to clarify Trump’s comments. “Well, as I was sitting there listening to that, there was a little bit of tongue-in-cheek in that characterisation. But there was also a lot of truth to it,” he told reporters.

In his eight-minute address, Trump also urged Xi to “act faster and more effectively” to extinguish North Korea’s nuclear “menace”.

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 “I know one thing about your president: if he works on it hard, it will happen,” the US president added, to laughter. “There is no doubt about it.”

Xi and Trump unveiled more than $250bn in economic deals, a move one Chinese official hailed as “truly a miracle”, but which sceptics believe were likely to have materialised even without the presidential visit.

Earlier, Xi greeted Trump on a red carpet at the eastern steps of the Mao-era Great Hall, observed by members of China’s top leadership and a military guard of honour.

The leaders of the world’s two largest economies watched a military parade and were greeted by flag-waving schoolchildren from both China and the US.

China has painted Trump’s reception as an unusually enthusiastic tribute to a respected foreign friend. On Thursday night, Trump was honoured with a state banquet at which guests were served grouper fillets in chilli oil, coconut-flavoured chicken soup and wines from the Great Wall winery in China’s Hebei province.

“As we often say in China, what a joy it is to have friends come from afar,” Xi said in his toast celebrating “the friendship between China and the United States” and its “boundless potential for growth”.

2.      What Saudi Arabia’s purge means for the Middle East

The Washington Post     November 6, 2017

International and domestic crises dominated Saudi Arabia over the weekend. On Saturday, a wide variety of powerful Saudi princes and officials were arrested in the name of a new drive against corruption. The same day, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned in a live television broadcast from Riyadh, and an alleged Houthi missile struck Riyadh from Yemen, provoking Saudi Arabia to close the border of its already embargoed neighbor and warn of war with Iran.

Pro-government analysts and officials have focused on the question of corruption and framed the arrests as evidence of the crown prince and king’s dedication to reform. Most independent analysts instead emphasized the rapid consolidation of power by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who seems to be systematically removingpotential challengers to his power before his succession to the throne.

While the full scope and ultimate outcome of the weekend’s arrests remain unclear, the new developments should be understood in the context of interaction between Mohammed bin Salman’s short window for domestic power consolidation and Saudi Arabia’s unsettled regional position. Mohammed bin Salman’s domestic political ambitions and foreign policy moves have unfolded in a deeply uncertain environment, with both domestic power and regional order in an unprecedented state of flux.

The Yemeni missile attack, Hariri’s resignation, and the Saudi arrests would ordinarily be viewed as events of primarily local significance. In today’s context, however, they have sparked fears of a dangerous and unpredictable regional escalation against Iran. Since the Arab uprisings of 2011, Gulf regimes such as Saudi Arabia have lived in existential fear of the sudden eruption of popular mobilization, while pursuing unusually interventionist foreign policies across the region. The extended Saudi power transition at home and its erratic pattern of failed foreign policy interventions must be understood within this wider regional context.

Though seemingly unprecedented, the weekend’s developments follow the pattern Mohammed bin Salman has used since the beginning of his rapid ascent to power in 2015. In both domestic and foreign affairs, he has consistently undertaken sudden and wide-ranging campaigns for unclear reasons which shatter prevailing norms. At home, this audacious political strategy has proven relatively successful — at least in the short term. Abroad, foreign policy gambits such as the intervention in Yemen and the blockade of Qatar have rapidly degenerated into damaging quagmires. This combination of domestic success and foreign policy failure helps makes sense of this weekend’s blizzard of activity and may help preview what comes next.

Corruption or consolidation?

The Saudi government and sympathetic commentators have framed the arrests as an aggressive new move against corruption. Corruptionis a massive popular Saudi concern, and positioning Mohammed bin Salman in opposition to corruption would be politically astute. But there is little reason to believe that corruption is the true cause of the crackdown and not simply its justification. The arrests look like a classic purge, removing prominent challengers and neutering competing power centers in a way designed to also intimidate any less well-known potential opponents. The benefits of securing the immediate transition of power may outweigh the risk of generating dangerous opposition in the long term.

Breaking established norms and rules has been a consistent part of Mohammed bin Salman’s political strategy. The move against a wide variety of rival princes and power centers was sudden, massive and designed to shock. The speed and scope of these moves also seems tied to the need for Mohammed bin Salman to lock down his succession to the throne before his father’s death. Such a strategy has allowed him to consolidate power remarkably quickly, while generating large and growing potential opposition down the road.

The arrests targeted multiple types of potential challengers at the same time. Some represented obvious political threats, such as Mutaib bin Abdullah, the former king’s son and head of the National Guard, which posed the primary military check on Mohammed bin Salman’s ambition. Others did not, such as the eye-opening arrest of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the wealthiest and best connected men in the world and a leading player in international Arab and Saudi media. Still others occupied key positions in the government crucial to implementing Mohammed bin Salman’s economic reform plans. Striking all of these untouchables at once seems designed to pose a massive shock to the system and forestall any single organized response.

The targeting of these high-level figures follows a wave of arrests of potential Islamist dissidents, the removal of former Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and a general atmosphere of increasing repression. Permitting women to drive and curbing the powers of the religious police may be partial and limited steps, but they had typically been portrayed as red lines that could not be crossed without risking instability. Even partial enactment of the grand economic and social reforms presented in his Vision 2030 would upend traditional patterns of political economy. He seems to be pushing the creation of a personalized system of rule without the checks and balances that have typically characterized the Saudi system of governance.

3.      Louvre Abu Dhabi, a Cultural Cornerstone Where East Meets West

     

 

The Emirates’ aim: to promote the capital as a tolerant global city, and
its flagship museum, opening this week, as a bridge between civilizations.

The New York Times    NOV. 7, 2017

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — A decade ago the French architect Jean Nouvel sketched the bare outlines of a fretted dome on flimsy paper. Today this enormous metallic-silver canopy rises over desert sands and the Persian Gulf — marking the new Louvre Abu Dhabi museum and the global ambitions of France and the United Arab Emirates to deploy art as a diplomatic tool they call “soft power.”

The vast dome and clusters of waterfront galleries beneath it will open to the public on Nov. 11, with sunlight cascading through a lacework of stainless steel and aluminum and layers of star-shaped patterns. It’s been a long wait for those thousands of stars to align — with five years of construction delays and technical challenges to build the estimated $650 million flagship on Saadiyat Island, by a lagoon near this capital city.

And the museum’s history is also turbulent — a saga of economic downturn, collapsing oil prices, regional political tensions and fierce French intellectual debates about the risks of lending its national treasures to the Middle East in exchange for petrodollars. Through it all the Louvre Abu Dhabi has brought together East and West and also managed to unite France’s fractious national museums, which submerged envy and ego to cooperate on the project brokered by two governments.

“Although a lot has changed, not a lot has changed here,” said Mr. Nouvel, inspecting the museum “village” last week, where workmen rushed to plant garden blooms and dig one courtyard for a Rodin sculpture recently arrived from France. “The principle is that it remains a museum that belongs to the geography, and culture and identity of the country.”

But which country is that? Since the opening date was announced in September, planes have been roaring out of Paris about every two days for Abu Dhabi, with national treasures. The precious passengers include a self-portrait of van Gogh, Monet’s 1877 painting of the Saint-Lazare railroad station and Napoleon himself — a portrait of the emperor crossing the Alps on a rearing white horse, by Jacques-Louis David.

Jacques-Louis David’s stirring portrait, “Napoléon Bonaparte, First Consul, Crossing the Alps at Mont Saint Bernard on May 20, 1800,” was among the French loans to Louvre Abu Dhabi, from Versailles.CreditMusée national des Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, Versailles

The Louvre Abu Dhabi is the result of a rare government accord in 2007 between France and this young, oil-rich monarchy on the Persian Gulf. The U.A.E. is leasing the powerful Louvre brand for 400 million euros (about $464 million) for more than 30 years. Eventually it will pay a total of 974 million euros for French expertise, guidance and loans.

In return, 17 French museums and institutions shipped 300 art works here this year, from Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait of “La Belle Ferronnière” to massive marble nymphs from Versailles. French museum experts are also advising the Emiratis on what to acquire and organizing temporary exhibitions for up to 15 years.

“Soft power is now the catchword of all diplomats”¨ said Zaki Anwar Nusseibeh, the U.A.E. minister of state, who was an adviser from the beginning when the museum was simply a sketch and its future site was inhabited by nesting turtles and seashells. “It means it is no longer sufficient to have military or economic power if you are not able to share your values. Exchange — this is what soft power is about.”

The public opening on Saturday — with an appearance on Wednesday by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and flyovers with the Louvre’s name on the wings of the country’s national Etihad airlines — comes as the monarchy is also engaged in a diplomatic boycott of neighboring Qatar, over allegations that Qatar supports extremists.